His testimony was pretty good, communicating the earnestness with which the American public wants human space flight, but the influence of that “survey” was not at all obvious.

“Maybe you should make your judgment as to the relative merits of conducting this (admittedly unscientific) poll until after you have heard my testimony.”

OK, I’ll do that. The relative merits of your non-scientific multiple choice survey (or “push-poll”, as some have interpreted it) were sure not obvious from this testimony. If used as background information, that’s fine, but just asking people for their views and insights, in text form, probably would have been a lot more illuminating.

There is a lesson here for those who might be prospective informal poll takers.

It is and I cannot understand why this WH is so reluctant to push forward. They will lose anything substantial if they don’t do something about it soon.

Of all the NewSpacers Bigelow is the one who would hate the most to see his company turned into a NASA zombie.

Except for Jeff Bezos…

Why do you say that, Rand?

Well you and Miles can testify. None of what you relate is my experience as I talk before various breakfast clubs here in Clear Lake Tx

Robert G. Oler

And if Dreamchaser is a “splash-down capsule,”:why does it have landing gear? And how do you know what the recovery mode for Orion light is? Or Blue Origin’s biconic?

Do you enjoy flaunting your ignorance on the Internet?

Except for Jeff Bezos…

Robert – The trouble with that point is that there is still a lot of support for the public options, with regards to health care, and there is quite a bit of support for a jobs bill.

Ferris.

We will see.

The public option is extremly popular with Americans (and with me) plus it helps the deficit, it helps our competitive nature as a Republic and it is good for the citizenry. (as an aside it might also help Rescue Obama from the JE Carter hall of fame).

The jobs bill is shaping up to be a jobs bill. The stimulus bill was not a jobs bill, it was a “save public employees” bill. The bulk of the cash went to states and large cities trying to stave off either massive tax increases at the local level or massive service cuts.

Oddly had Obama pushed the stim bill to be a jobs bill I suspect the economy would be in a much better position AND he would have in the process done what FDR did…which was make a new America. The current jobs bill is almost all “brick and concrete” meaning that it goes toward things that will be useful to The Republic and local municipalities long after the spending on the project is done.

Texas A&M with the Bush 41 library has done a study of Depression era projects as well as “true” jobs projects (meaning something of value is left after the spending is done) and the best guess is that between 20-40K jobs are created by such projects…mostly by what the “thing” does after it is built. Some of course are more then others…for instance LV Nevada is a one horse town without that big dam near it…Having been a “minor” political official in Clear Lake and having seen some real jobs spending (not NASA) I think that number is pretty close.

In the process such spending creates “the new Republic”…so money spent on say HV power grids more then pays back what is spent, even when the interest on deficit spending is figured in. The problem with NASA of course is that nothing of value remains after the money disperses. It might all be “spent” in The Republic but what it builds usually is valueless after it is launched. (this of course is not accurate for things like the GPS system where value is easily returned).

this is why Obama will spend billions on high speed rail in FL but wont spend money on going back to the Moon.,

Having said that…I still predict that the deficit will be the key issue in 2010…we will see

Robert G. Oler

I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the negotiations between NASA and Bigelow. Of all the NewSpacers Bigelow is the one who would hate the most to see his company turned into a NASA zombie. Trouble is, NASA is his only significant market. NASA doesn’t like their tin cans being one-upped by Bigelow and wants their Transhab patents back. Sparks will fly.